Exchange Solutions

Ran into an issue recently where Outlook was working fine, however, Android devices, particularly mobile phones, would throw an error that the certificate was invalid when configuring an Exchange mailbox via the Gmail app. The error was:

Certificate not valid

The Gmail app can't guarantee the security of this email address. Your messages would be at risk.

When clicking Advanced we received more clarification that the certificate was not trusted. However, we could quickly see that the correct certificate was being presented to the Android devices and it clearly wasn’t an issue with the date.

Certificate not trusted

Contact your email provider about this error, or proceed with username (unsafe).

We then tested our certificate with DigiCert’s SSL Certificate Checker. This is a great tool to confirm that the certificate is installed correctly and that the certificate path is valid. You can check any certificate with this tool. It does not have to be a certificate issued by DigiCert. In our case, we were testing our GoDaddy certificate with this tool. [Read more…] about GMail App fails to connect to Exchange – Certificate not valid

While reviewing the event logs on your Exchange server you could encounter the following error.

Log Name: Application
Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Event ID: 2112
Task Category: Topology

Description:
 Process Microsoft.Exchange.Directory.TopologyService.exe (PID=2700). 
 The Exchange computer dc03.supertekboy.com does not have Audit Security 
 Privilege on the domain controller dc03.supertekboy.com. This domain 
 controller will not be used by Exchange Active Directory Provider.

We ran into this recently at a customer. This was an odd error because the description specified the name of one of our domain controllers as an “Exchange Computer”. That aside, my customer was receiving this error for two of their three domain controllers (dc02 & dc03). The error was also repeated across all their Exchange servers.

To make matters worse if the customer shut down the only domain controller not reported in these errors (dc01) Exchange would become completely unavailable. As the error stated, dc02 and dc03 were definitely not being used by the Exchange Active Directory Provider.

Further analysis of the event logs also revealed informational alert MSExchange ADAccess 2080. In this alert we could see our three domain controllers with one striking difference.

Log Name: Application
Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Event ID: 2080
Task Category: Topology

Description:
 Exchange Active Directory Provider has discovered the following servers with
 the following characteristics:

 (Server name | Roles | Enabled | Reachability | Synchronized | GC capable |
 PDC |  SACL right  | Critical Data | Netlogon | OS Version)
 In-site:
 dc01.supertekboy.com CDG 1 7 7 1 0  1  1 7 1
 dc02.supertekboy.com CDG 1 7 7 1 0  0  1 7 1
 dc03.supertekboy.com CDG 1 7 7 1 0  0  1 7 1

In the eighth column (highlighted), dc01 was reporting a 1 whereas dc02 and dc03 were reporting a 0. All other column data was identical between the three servers. The words in parenthesis are actually the column headers. They don’t line up very well in event viewer but if we count to the eighth word we see the column is titled “SACL right”. What this means is that the Exchange servers are missing the SACL right on the domain controllers marked with a zero.  Or more specifically, Exchange is missing the right to manage the security and audit logs of those two domain controllers. [Read more…] about Exchange does not have Audit Security Privilege on the domain controller

When installing an Exchange update you may run into the following error.

Error:
The following error was generated when "$error.Clear(); 
 & $RoleBinPath\ServiceControl.ps1 -Operation:DisableServices -Roles:($RoleRoles.Replace('Role','').Split(',')) -SetupScriptsDirectory:$RoleBinPath;
 & $RoleBinPath\ServiceControl.ps1 Stop $RoleRoles.Replace('Role','').Split(',')
 " was run: "Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.Tasks.ServiceStopFailureException: 
 Service 'tmlisten' failed to stop due to error:'Cannot stop tmlisten service on computer 
---> System.InvalidOperationException:  Cannot stop tmlisten service on computer 
---> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The requested control is not valid for this service

The tmlisten service is associated with the Trend Micro antivirus product and specifically the Trend Micro Listener service. This service requires a password to stop and can not be disabled via either the services snap-in or command line.

While upgrading one my Exchange lab servers I was presented with the error, “The certificate is expired.”

This error occurred while setup was installing the transport service and it was blocking the install from completing. Further investigation of the event logs indicated that the transport certificate had expired (Event ID 12015). This made sense why the setup was failing during that step.

The challenge here was the Exchange Admin Center would no longer load. Luckily, the Exchange Management Shell was still operational. Following are the steps to renew a certificate using the Exchange Management Shell. I have included instructions for renewing both a self-signed and third-party certificate. Once renewed setup will complete. [Read more…] about Error installing Exchange update – The certificate is expired